When I was in high school and my sister had gone off to college, my parents and I practiced a sporadic winter’s night ritual. My father would light a fire in the fireplace, unfold a large card table in the centre of the den and pour out the thousand tantalising pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. On those nights the television sat silent and dark in its corner and we pondered, first over the photograph on the cover of the puzzle box, and then at the jumbled pieces spread out before us on the surface of the table.
We implemented several different strategies throughout the process of working on a puzzle. We would begin with the straight edges. These were the easiest to find and fit together. They formed the framework for the project and gave us an idea of its scope. From there we would focus on a single aspect, the sky for instance, gathering all the pieces that bore the same patches of colour. We would study the gaps in the scene and hunt for the corresponding shapes or hold up a piece and search for a comparable gap. Whatever the strategy, there was always that surprising jolt of exhilaration when two segments of the jigsaw snapped neatly together with a satisfying click.
I don’t think the three of us were ever more present as when we were huddled over one of those puzzles in the firelight, reconstructing an artist’s rendering of the Swiss Alps or the Grand Canal or the Pyramids at Giza. I can see my mother’s lower lip jutted out in concentration and my father inhaling deeply on a filtered Benson and Hedges as the fire exhaled a blue-grey haze of smoke that floated around us in the little room. It was as though we shared one solid, undisputed and important purpose in this world.
If it is the function of the brain to collect and store the perceptions that flood into it from the sensory organs, it is the function of the mind to interpret all that data and to draw its conclusions accordingly. As such, the human mind is not wired to sit quietly in the present. It is a tumble of interlocking pieces—memories and thoughts rather haphazardly assembled to create a somewhat coherent entity, the main occupation of which is to ensure the survival of a sense of self.
Sometimes despite our deepest conviction, my parents and I could not completely finish the puzzle at hand. An inspiring foreign scene would present itself at last, minus a piece or two that had most likely been eaten by the dog. At those times it was best not to fixate on what was glaringly absent, but to be content with what was there.
We come scattered into this life and spend our days puzzling over and piecing together the truth of who we are and what it all may mean. We define the edges of our existence, we search for significance and fill in the empty spaces with what is available to us. We form opinions and fears and alliances. Often we find ourselves a few pieces short. But even as we fumble, seeking connection in the dim flickering of awareness, I cannot help but believe that each of us, when held up to that ever-elusive light is an integral piece of some mysterious picture that is perpetually emerging and yet never fully revealed.